The Enemy Within: Fear And Loathing In Harperland

Harper "snubbed" Chief Justice McLachlin when
she tried to warn him about issues relating to Marc
Nadon's qualifications

It should come as a surprise to no one that Stephen Harper has decided to pick a fight with the Supreme Court of Canada, particularly with Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin. 

Citizen Stephen has recently claimed that it was "improper" for Justice McLachlin to attempt to contact him regarding the appointment of Marc Nadon  to the high court during the evaluation phase of the process. 

What Harper fails to mention in his spinning of the whole Nadon debacle, is that McLachlin was merely doing her job by advising the Prime Minister of the presence of "red-flags" regarding the qualifications of a potential appointee. He also doesn't mention, that McLachlin also subsequently swore Nadon in as a Justice of the Supreme Court. It was McLachlin's peers, led by previous Harper appointee, Quebec Justice Richard Wagner, who, in ruling on a Constitutional Challenge from Toronto Lawyer, Rocco Galati,  determined that Nadon was not qualified to sit on the high court as a member from Quebec.

But Harper had been stung by five straight rebuffs from the Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of some of his ham-fisted attempts to change the way Canada does things. And as I pointed out in this article about my belief that our current Prime Minister suffers from a significant mental illness, he does not forgive a slight. Ever!

To this day, Steve carries a grudge against the Liberal Party, Pierre Trudeau and anyone who happens to bear the name Trudeau, as a result of the National Energy Program in 1980. Thirty four years is a long time to carry a grudge. 

Harper also carries a mean "hate-on" for the United Nations for turning

Stephen has all but declared a
"shootin war" on the U.N.

 down his bid for a seat on the Security Council in 2010. Since then, Stephen has paid little heed to any recommendations the UN has made, has outright blocked many of their initiatives and has undermined them at every opportunity. He has chosen to align himself with fellow NATO cold-war allies when dealing with international crises, so gone are the days of Canada as world leaders in peace keeping. Harper has even gone so far as to suggest that the U.N. is redundant and should be done away with. 

But as Toronto Star journalist, Chantel Hebert points out, this is how our Prime Minister deals with those who attempt to apply checks and balances on his autocratic rule. He and his spin-doctors attempt to smear and to discredit them and to generally declare war on their very existence. 

Stephen Harper, a prisoner of his own paranoid
delusions. The problem is, he's dragged us
 right into the cell with him.

Yes, mental illness can be a bitch. You see the world as a decidedly hostile place.  You are surrounded by enemies and  you are constantly on the lookout for the next conspiracy. You see yourself as constantly being the victim of the intentions of shadowy figures and you trust no one. Former Harper mentor, Tom Flanagan, who is now "persona-non-grata" in Harperland, recently said that Stephen's erratic behaviour can see him swing from incidents of "white hot rage to long periods of depression where he is incapable of making a decision". 

But getting back to Stephen's feud with the Supreme Court, he declared  at the Conservative Convention in Calgary last November that the courts are the enemies of his vision for a reformed Senate. There's that word, "enemy" again. Senate reform has been one of Harper's central goals and the high court's ruling that he didn't have the authority to unilaterally alter the make up of the Senate, how Senators are chosen or how it does business, was a major setback. To him then, the Supreme Court Justices are evil conspirators, out to quash his heroic efforts at remaking Canada in his own delusional image. 

The truth is, the Supreme Court never said the Senate can't be

The SCOC never told Harper the Senate
couldn't be reformed. Just not HIS way.
Rule of Law Stephen, rule of law.

reformed, or even abolished. But there is a formula for doing so as stipulated in the Constitution. They merely said that Harper's idea of reform can't be achieved in the manner in which he was attempting to do it - unilaterally and without consultation with, or input from, the provinces. And since Harper is incapable of building consensus (hence his refusal to attend First Minister's Conferences) his dream of Senate reform went up in a puff of smoke. 

And that the SCOC blew Harper's half-cocked efforts out of the water based on the Constitution (which he automatically loathes because it is a Trudeau invention), was probably more than he could handle. Hence his shot across the bow of Chief Justice McLachlin. 

So it's no wonder then that Stephen blames the Supreme Court for his failures. He see's them as treasonous villains for upholding a law (the Constitution) he views as being purely sinister. Just as someone with Paranoid Personality Disorder would do. So he will seek to have the "Supremes" tried, convicted and executed in the court of public opinion just as he has with all other transgressors.  Which is all the justification he needs to attempt to invoke change within the high court as well. 

So if Stephen's ruinous tenure survives past 2015, look for Vic Toews to be elevated to the highest court in the land. And may God have mercy on us all. 

If Stephen has his way, look for this man to be
elevated to the SCOC. Yes, this is Vic Toews,
he of the "impregnated baby sitter".

We Have Ourselves to Blame for Our Corrupt Government

As the title implies, we only have ourselves to blame for our current ultra-corrupt majority government. They have stolen our government and our democracy right out from under our very noses. The Robo-call scandal is only the latest in a long line of scams, misdeeds, frauds and outright illegal and anti-democratic behaviour. Consider the following:

Stevie, the Evangelical Reformist

-The Reform Party of Canada was formed by the Evangelical Preston Manning in 1987 (yes THE Preston Manning of the Manning Centre who just recently had the reporter who broke the Robo-call story turfed out of his soiree). Another Evangelical, "Steve" Harper joined this bizarre collection of extremists in 1988 and became it's Chief Policy Officer. But these Western-Centric radicals  could gain no credibility east of Manitoba and the Reform Party was rife with unprofessional, partisan and unethical behaviour. They were too far out into right field, even for Blue Tories and were dismissed out of hand by the majority of the country.

- The Reform Party re-branded it self as the Alliance party and was led temporarily by a Jet-Skiing Evangelical, Stockwell Day,  who believes the earth is only 5,000 years old and that men walked with dinosaurs. But they were still a half-assed bunch of extremists that no one took seriously.

"Et Tu Peter"?

- In 2003, Peter MacKay became the last leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada based on the promise he would NEVER negotiate an amalgamation deal with The Reform/ Alliance bunch. A promise he promptly broke once elected leader. Whether he conspired with "Steve" Harper before hand we might never know. But we do know that MacKay went  from being the leader of a toothless non-party at the time, to a position of power and influence in the Harper Government, complete with models hanging off his arm and a brief "tryst" with the lovely  automobile heiress, Belinda Stronach.  And we watched this all happen.

-The treachery that allowed the merger of the Reform/Alliance party and the near-dead Progressive Conservative Party gave Harper and his Reform cronies control of the "Conservative" moniker which  they quickly adopted, dropping the "Progressive" label in the process, which suited their Ultra-right wing Neo-Conservative purposes. This gave the Reform Party the instant credibility they had long sought even though they were nothing more than carnivorous,  ideological wolves in Conservative apparel. And we watched and the main-stream media blithely and erroneously referred to this new party as "Tories" thus giving them even more undeserved credence.

- We watched as this new party, riding on the momentum of the Liberal's own in-house scandal (aided greatly by the RCMP who chose to make public, damning accusations about the Liberals  at the height of the 2006 campaign) managed to grasp a minority government for the first time.

- We watched as the "Reform/Conservatives" Prorogued Parliament not once, but twice. First to avoid the will of the people (which would have seen a majority coalition  govern us, at least temporarily) and again to avoid having to account for the Afghan detainee scandal (which they have never accounted for, despite the prospect of MacKay and Harper being seen as potential war criminals)

15 year old Omar Khadr, wounded by American soldiers

- We watched as Harper spent over three million dollars of tax payers money on legal fees to deny Omar Khadr his constitutional and international rights as a child soldier and keep him penned up in Guantanamo Bay .The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Harper Government was denying the boy his Charter Rights but stopped short of ordering them to repatriate him. Khadr was 15 when he was shot by American soldiers. He is now 23 years old and continues to be held on what can best be described as circumstantial evidence while the Harper Government continues to thumb it's nose at the Supreme Court.

- We watched as the Reform/Conservative back room boys, using American-style smear tactics, systematically destroyed the political career of one of the few remaining good men in Ottawa, Stephan Dion.

-We watched as Stephen Harper and his then director of communications, Kory Teneycke  secretly met with the heads of the ultra right-wing Fox News in the states. We subsequently .watched as the Prime Ministers Office pressured the CRTC to grant a bid led by Teneycke to licence  Sun TV News. We watched as Teneycke resigned over tampering with an Avvaz petition to stop the licensing of Sun TV news (alias Fox News North). We watched as Teneycke was quietly rehired. We watched Sun TV news become a reality.

- We watched as Kory Teneycke told delegates at a Manning Centre Conference (remember Preston the Evangelical?) that he would love to have the names of Left-leaning College professors and teachers so he could "make them famous" (meaning he would love to start a smear campaign against them and otherwise, silence them)

- We watched as the Reform/Conservatives, who campaigned with promises of more transparency in Government became the most closed and secretive Government in our history.

- We watched as Stephen Harper promised Senate Reform, then proceeded to stack the Senate with partisan cronies, mostly defeated Conservative candidates, so that no matter which bills were passed by Parliament, they would either be passed or defeated at the whim of the hyper-partisan Reform/Conservative Senate . Harper has appointed more partisan Senators than any other Prime Minister in our history.

- We watched as Dmitri Soudas, another Harper Director of Communication, put pressure on the Montreal Port Authority to hire as it's new Board President, a man sympathetic to the Reform/Conservative cause.

- We watched as the Government of Harper  systematically fired, silenced and otherwise ruined the careers of any pubic service whistle blower who spoke out against  the Reform/Conservative agenda.

- We watched as The Government of Harper sought to invest BILLIONS of dollars in a new fighter Aircraft, who's need is questionable, with out first tendering a contract or asking for proposals, all at the behest of our neighbors to the south.

- We watched as Stephen Harper ruled his party with an iron "my way or the highway" fist. We watched him silence his own party members. We watched as he forbade candidates from participating in  open campaign debates, we watched as he kicked people out of his campaign rallies on the basis of the content of their Facebook  accounts (who did these internet searches was never revealed) and we then watched as he stacked these rallies with rabid partisans who shouted down legitimate questions from the media. We watched as Harper limited questioning of any kind from the media at his campaign rallies.

- We are still watching Harper's attempts at dismantlement the CBC as he views them as being "Anti-Government". And we are still watching to see what he intends to do with the "war-chest" he is amassing in order to combat the main stream media, ALL of whom he feels, are too left leaning.

-  We watched as the Harper Government (as the Government of Canada is now officially called) was found guilty of Contempt of Parliament. No other government in the history of parliamentary democracy has ever been guilty of such an infraction. Neither Harper nor any of his Reform/Conservative cronies have ever been held accountable for this.

-We watched, silently dumbfounded, when it was revealed that the Reform/Conservatives had produced a 200 page manual on how to stone-wall Parliamentary committees in which the opposition held a majority of members, thus suppressing and otherwise, impeding the democratic process once again.

- We watched as the Government of Harper was found guilty of election fraud around the "in and out" scandal that occurred in the 2006 election. We watched as the party was given a slap on the wrist, a $52,000 fine. And we watched as the Harper-led Reform/Conservatives spun this guilty finding into a "victory"!

- We continue to watch as the Government of Harper refuses to answer or admit to any of it's indiscretions. Instead, it denies, deflects, minimizes or instead, sets out to attack and defame it's opponents rather than proving them wrong or taking responsibility for it's actions. The standard operating procedure is for them to tell the same lie so often that the electorate will come to accept it as truth eg:" Coalition governments are un-democratic".

And the above list of Reform/Conservative indiscretions is far from complete. We have watched for six long years as the Government of Harper has systematically engaged in unethical, undemocratic behaviour and blown us way off course using rhetoric and fear tactics. They have lied, cheated and  stolen from the Canadian people. They have ruined careers and lives and eroded the rights of Canadian citizens. And we have given this all, passing notice and shaken our heads at the deteriorating state of our democracy and done nothing but given them cart-blanch to rule as they see fit.  We have accepted it as the "new normal" and moved on with our lives- until now that the Robo-call scandal has come to light. We are finally waking up. We are finally beginning to take action. We are finally realizing that our very democracy is in grave peril. And we have no one but ourselves to blame as we watched passively, this dreadful progression and rise to absolute power of an idealistic, power-hungry mad-man. We should have seen this coming. Any political party that is born of treachery and deceit is destined to govern in the same manner.